Crayola Colored Woodwork

Top New York designer Jeffrey Bilhuber must have been inspired by his 8-year old son judging from the crayola colored woodwork he used in a New Jersey farm house. The home was featured for its colorfest qualities in the February issue of House Beautiful. Sprawling, imaginative and chock full of patterns and interactive hues, it is nothing short of flamboyant. Most interesting to me, however, was all the color on the woodwork: windows and frames painted chartreuse or violet, door casings gone purple, and a staircase with green balusters. I was immediately reminded of my 2010 post on Wild Color Woodwork. This house moves the wild dial to wilder.

Benjamin Moore paint colors are used throughout. In a corner of the living room [top] the walls are painted in a pale historic blueish green called Woodlawn Blue (HC-147) which, against the strong fuchsia (Malabar’s Tabia) fabric on the sofa and the the bright red (Malabar Carom) curtains looks neutral. But check out the casing above the gray-painted french doors. That’s Brookside Moss (2145-30) a chartreuse green that reaches out from the window to curtains in a similar yellow-green nearby.

I’ve seen lavender used as a neutral but making chartreuse function like that is another story. On a staircase, Brookside Moss appears on the balusters while an unspecified dark gray is used on the stringer, handrails and posts. A predominately red striped Patterson, Flynn and Martin carpet covering the treads and risers, making you want to skip down the stairs whistling because it feels so childlike. Wildest of all are the two-tone baseboards that frame the floors with a pop of acid color — chartreuse on the bottom and dark gray on top. It’s difficult to tell whether there actual moldings or they are just painted on.

I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Jeffrey Bilhuber while I was a contributing write at AOL. I know him to be a serious and immensely talented person. He was clearly giving these clients a rule-breaking house. Purple library walls (Wolf-Gordon’s Bonaire vinyl in Orchid) coordinate with Benjamin Moore’s Bordéaux [sic] Red (1465) on the doorway trim and crown molding. That paint color is a dead ringer for an ancient shade of Revlon nail polish called Windsor and not likely because the Queen of England had anything to do with it. I adore the golden ‘antelope’ print carpet.

Most riotous of all is the master bedroom where walls are painted in Colony Green (694), a pale Easter eggy color, with Brookside Moss again on the windows. “I get so tired of windows that look like bars in a cell and make me feel trapped inside a house. I often end up painting them green, to blend in with the landscape,” Bilhuber stated. In this house, the landscape feels like it was brought indoors and filled in with colors pulled from a 120-piece box of crayons. Such fun.

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